[OpTard]

i'm just curious what everyone's opinion is on this new "second feature" trend. DC started it and now marvel's picking it up.

basically, to justify raising prices from $2.99 to $3.99, they're adding regular back up features to some of the books. paul dini's batman has manhunter, booster gold has blue beetle, incredible hulk will have she-hulk (the weird new one, not jen walters), etc.

so do people think this is a good idea or a bad idea? would you drop a book you would normally read because you don't want the back up? would you ignore the back up and basically pay $3.99 for 22 pages? would you force yourself to read the back up because dagnabbit you paid for it! or would you switch to trade to avoid the backup all together?

for me i'm mostly against it. i guess there's just too many back ups i'm just not interested in. so far there's only 2 books with back ups i'm happy about, detective comics and adventure comics. detective has batwoman as the main feature and the question as the back up, both written by greg rucka, and adventure has superboy as the main and the legion as the back up, both written by geoff johns (though one of em i think has a co-writer. i forget who and which one though).

those are 2 books that i think are absolutely worth the price of admission. but they're also books that i would get if each story were an individual title. but in other cases i feel like i'm being forced to buy something i don't want. i like booster gold but i'm not interested in the blue beetle. i like paul dini's batman, but there's nothing in the world that's gonna get me to read manhunter. and what the fuck is the deal with this new she-hulk, and why do i have to buy it in order to get some greg pak incredible hulk goodness?

so i have a feeling these will become more and more common from both companies. what are your thoughts and plans?

[Batman]

Well, 1. It's a throwback to the good old days (especially Superboy and the Legion costarring in Adventure.) and 2. I never pay for comic books anyway, so, yeah, I'm all for it.

Which Superboy?... is Connor back from the dead already?

[OpTard]

i guess someone's not reading legion of 3 worlds.

[Stu]

I'm liking it so far with Blue Beetle and Manhunter's backups. Also looking forward to The Question in Detective. To be fair, with the first two, DC are giving an outlet for characters whose own books are cancelled but have a big enough following that could be taken over to the titles they're piggybacking on. I guess I'm lucky that what I buy that has backups appeals to me though and I can see why it might not for other people, but I do think they've paired the backups pretty well with the main features.

[OpTard]

if it was booster with a ted kord back up i'd be right there. but jaime really doesn't do it for me. if i wasn't already getting booster and batman in trade i would certainly start now.